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User blog:Starfleet Academy/A Light at the End of the Tunnel
In light of the resolution, we now have a rebuild operation on our hands. I know that you all want to just jump straight in and start fixing the site, but we actually do need a plan of attack. The Plan I propose that we fix first the articles on diesel locomotives. But the question is should II happen to be comfortable with the history system, that's all; for more information on what I plan to use see should go through the articles and revert them to previous states? When I say that, I mean back to the weekend before last or even earlier; a lot of good edits where made on the weekend of the 17th. What we need are ideas. If you have any ideas to improve the site please let us know. Once I've updated my paper draft, I'll be writing a blog on the core policies and guidelines LW needs for discussion. Yes, you did hear me right, I started writing this back in late-June–early-July but I didn't think I'd get it through. I will be getting hold of some reference material myself, but for the next few weeks you'll all have to be patient with me. Bot flag I've created an account called Starfleet Bot. I need the community's agreement to request a for that account. Having a bot flag will mean that the dozens of edits the bot will perform each hour will be hidden from , and will be under a "show button" in . I will be using AutoWikiBrowser, something I have used in the past but didn't care too much for it. This time, I've actually read the manual so it's a lot more straight forward. As the name would suggest, this isn't really a bot, but is rather a semi-automatic, integrated, editing UI. It does have a bot mode to make automatic edits; I'll reserve use of this to repetitive edits with little or no variables. The Test I'm going to run a test for the bot to show people how it works. Articles in Category:Articles in need of rewriting don't always have on them. So here's the test: I'll run through said cat to add to the topI could add it to section tops, but AWB won't know what's badly written or not of the articles and remove the cat from the article. (The latter is because the template adds it anyway. Without the category on the page, once template is removed cat goes too.) Time and frequency I would probably be using the bot only at non-daylight hours in the USA. This is to avoid s. I hope to aim for between 9:30pm and 6:00am. Bots are notorious for making edit conflicts, so I would do all edits in batches. AWB tells me how many pages there are in a list, so dividing them up efficiently is far from difficult. I would set AWB for ~5 seconds between edits. I certainly won't run the thing at less than 3 seconds because I don't want to overload my PC. If approved, here are some uses that AWB will be quite helpful for: Bio headings I would like to remove all the "Bio" headings from the articles. I don't know what other people think about this heading practice, but it doesn't make any sense to me. HenryDuckFan sort of explain this to me once, but I still don't understand. If people would like to keep it, I suppose I'd cope. ;) But it is unnecessary, and makes the articles look rather barren upon page-load. Images For some bizarre reason I thought that I could categorize all the images on LW. When I started this there were like 300–400 but now it's impossible. AWB might be able to finish what I'm currently doing, or with a change of categories I should easily be able to add a category to everything in the file namespace. Anything you would like? If you have a small, tedious or repetitive task that is pretty much the same on every article, don't waste your time toiling away... send me a message on my wall and I'll run the bot over it. A note about HenryDuckFan I'm not going to get fixated on this subject, but I would like to point out how avoidable was this outcome. Looking forward, I see no reason why Corbin cannot earn the community's respect. Eventually I will probably be willing to give administrator rights back to Corbin if this indeed gained approval. However, due to how much trust the community has placed with me, I don't believe I could ever give bureaucrat rights back to Corbin. I hope as well that the other bureaucrats on this wiki see my reasoning here. The recent happenings are part of the Wiki's history, so I don't believe in it being brushed under the rug. I equally don't believe in it being used against Corbin now the vote is over. Let us move on from this, but not forget... Happy editing! Starfleet Academy (Messages) Notes Update. I've written a Manual of Style for Locomotive Wiki. It's early days, and I encourage you to question this guideline if you don't understand my rationale. This can be done in the comments below, on the MoS's associated talk page or on my Wall. If you see an obvious problem, feel free to edit the MoS. Change of mind. I've reviewed the timetable in my head for how quickly we're going to get LW back on track, and I've found it to be hopelessly optimistic at the current pace. Therefore, I'm going to be creating more policies and guidelines, announcing them, and then we can alter them if necessary. I feel we must get the basic wiki-policies down as soon as possible so we can move on as a wiki, not some shambles where the admins have final say in everything. Wikis do have "rules", but they are mostly self-governed. This means you do have to like the rules. However, I warn you that things that should have been controlled haven't been so far, and things that should not have been controlled have been. This will lead these changes to seem wholesale, but they won't make much difference in how you operate, I assure you. I do realize that the Wiki doesn't meet most of the Manual of Style. We can ease into the larger changes for existing stuff, but new stuff should follow all the technical restrictions from now on... 05:57, September 1, 2013 (UTC) Update. I've added LW's first policy: Locomotive Wiki:Blocking policy. This policy is really for user protection, so it was live from when it was added. If you have any concerns feel free to point them out in the comments below, on the new policy's talk page, or on my Wall. For now this policy is not locked, but I will be locking it soon. 10:41, September 3, 2013 (UTC) Category:Blog posts